


Shelter

by Naopao



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Healing, M/M, Memories, Pining, Touch-Starved, unestablished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 21:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13109142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naopao/pseuds/Naopao
Summary: Every passing day will be another step from your sorrows,Zenyatta had told him when they first arrived.Yet, we are imperfect and will stumble upon our paths. It is our burden, our strength to continue moving forward.





	Shelter

**Author's Note:**

> My [genyatta-ss](https://genyatta-ss.tumblr.com/) for [kesaheiina](https://kesaheiina.tumblr.com/), whose prompt was _memory, touch starvation_. I hope you enjoy!!

A too-white ceiling. Cables and blinking screens. Hisses, clicks. Sharpness. A needle piercing his arm, another at what remains of his neck. Numbness spreads through his limbs, blanketing deep, distant pain. Someone speaks, but he cannot hear over the dull buzzing in his ears.

He opens his eyes. The ceiling isn’t white plaster, but ancient shala. There is no operating table under his back, only a mattress, old but comfortable. The room holds no sterile chill; modern solar heat warms the buildings in the monastery, even the small one he occupies within the village.

Genji sits up and stares through his window into the pre-dawn gloom. He has been living with the shambali for months, sleeping more, eating more, or at least what little food he is able to stomach. Still, regular sleep means dreams.

He shakes his head, lets the tired, familiar miasma of emotion drain away.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

 _Every passing day will be another step from your sorrows._ Zenyatta had told him when they first arrived. _Yet, we are imperfect and will stumble upon our paths. It is our burden, our strength to continue moving forward._

The dream fades as he performs kata, the organic parts of him sweating, synthetics steaming as the first threads of dawn paint the sky. It is only then he feels ready to journey to the sanctum and join the others in morning meditation.

One step at a time.

* * *

Zenyatta lingers afterwards, floating over to his student as the last of his disciples filter out into the early morning sun.

“Good morning, Genji.” He says with a gentle tilt of his head, array brightening his face like a smile.

It had taken time to learn his master’s expressions, but living among other omnics had helped. In the early days of their acquaintance, Genji had never noticed how much his master smiled, only how annoying the omnic who followed in his footsteps was. Now, Zenyatta is the one leading _him_ , though he rarely has footsteps to follow. The thought makes him chuckle.

“You are in high spirits today.” Zenyatta threads his fingers in front of him. “I am glad to see it. May I inquire about its cause?”

Genji hums, unlatching his visor and faceplate, comfortable now that they are alone.

“Why do you hover, master?”

Genji casts his sights out toward the balconies that lead to the inner sanctum, taking in the impossibly blue skies, the snow-tipped peaks, hazy in the distance. The air is brisk against his tongue, refreshing, though he cannot breathe it uninhibited for long. If he stares at a singular point in the distance and narrows his eyes, he can almost imagine he is back within Shimada castle, looking over its cliffs. He sighs.

“An interesting question. Why do you think I hover?”

Genji turns to his master and cups his own chin, watching the steady flicker of Zenyatta’s array.

“To aid in meditation and enhance your mental clarity.”

“Hm. That,” Zenyatta says, orbs twirling in place around his throat. “And it looks very cool.”

Genji blinks for several seconds, then grips his waist and laughs, the sound echoing through the quiet halls of the sanctum. Zenyatta joins him, as soft as chimes, rising to stand, the rows of his array blinking in the low light.

Zenyatta lightly grasps his shoulder. Instead of flinching, as he had done before, Genji revels in the strange feeling of metal on carbon fiber, unbelievably warm.

“Let us get breakfast, oh wise one.” Genji says, laughter still in his words. Zenyatta nods, folding his hands together and dipping his head in a sage-like bow, earning him another laugh.

He lets Zenyatta lead him toward the dining hall and takes a moment to press his shoulder where his master had touched, tracing the remnants of its sensation.

* * *

A hand ruffling his hair. His older brother helping him stand. Friends leaning against his side with sake on their breath. Cloying perfume, hot bodies, curves and tight muscles. Blood and feathers and cruel, cerulean scales.

* * *

He wakes to an ancient shala ceiling.

Alone.

His master takes meals with him even though he cannot eat himself, commenting on the smell, wafting the scent of Genji’s tea into his intake chamber. Genji watches Zenyatta’s hand. His shoulder burns.

He studies the scrapes on Zenyatta’s chassis, left intact, not fixed like other omnics prefer, though of the more devout there is that mindset in droves, bodies worn to show their rejection of physical form.

Today, Zenyatta visits with new pilgrims. It leaves Genji breaking fast with Ipsa, one of Zenyatta’s pupils, kind but sharp-tongued. The other omnics grant Genji a wide berth, his human body uncomfortable, a reminder of their servitude and pain. Outside the monastery, the humans think him omnic. He doesn't know which is worse, and pushes the thought away. Ipsa, at least, didn't seem to mind.

“What purpose is there in letting your body rust? You must care for yourself if you are to pass along the tenants of the shambali.” She says, tipping back her shallow cup of oil.

A human might sit adjacent while eating in company, but Ipsa sits well out of arm’s reach. Wariness, or perhaps unawareness. Why should an omnic sit close if conversations are easily held from several feet away?

Genji shrugs his shoulders at the musing. It is an old argument of theirs. Ipsa twists her faceplate to him, three citrine dots flaring along her forehead, waiting for an answer.

“We all express our devotion in different ways.” Genji murmurs.

“It is foolish. In an attempt to be seen as most pious, they are most useless.” She turns away from him. “You support them, you who has changed nearly all of your prosthetics in the last two months.”

Genji pointedly does not look at the grays and greens of his new body.

“It is a personal choice.”

“Hmph. Humans are so difficult to parse.”

She stands, straightening her kasaya, her footsteps clattering on the stone as she departs without another word. Like a match strike, the company he kept blazed bright and extinguished in a moment. Genji sighs and heads towards one of the balconies carved into the mountain’s face. At least out there, among the wind and sky, the strange barrier between him and the everyone else feels normal.

* * *

His dreams are recurring but grounding in their familiarity. Lately, they focus on the past. Bare hands around his throat, calloused and thrumming with blood, thundering against his own pulse, or waking up in his childhood room next to a warm, faceless body.

This is one of those dreams. The blanket warm and light over his body, the soft thrum of another person at his back. It feels so alien somehow, but he relishes the moment, the ache of it settling in his chest. With the knowledge of what’s to come, he does not fight the dream’s predestined path. He turns over to stare at another faceless lover; at least here, he can pretend the sensation of being held is more than a memory.

Instead, he stares into a dim, nine point grid, glowing to the rhythm of each breath.

* * *

Ancient shala.

* * *

In each dream after when Genji turns over on the futon, Zenyatta is the one sleeping next to him. He does not startle awake a second time. He presses close, and he sleeps.

* * *

Once, Mondatta Tekhartha grasped his shoulder and welcomed him among the shambali. No one else had touched him since, not in solidarity or comfort. No one but Zenyatta, who lingers closer than the rest, meets him daily, grants him space when it is better to be alone. When they spar in the wide training area with the other shambali, Zenyatta meets Genji as an equal.

The other omnics are easily dispatched with a few, precise strikes. It was one of the only things he learned properly in his clan: the art of combat. It is perhaps why he looks as he does, why Hanzo struck him down so mercilessly, used all his might to destroy the wayward brother who had turned against the clan.

Zenyatta’s palm stops an inch from his faceplate, and Genji stumbles and falls to the ground.

“You are distracted.”

Genji's breathing hisses through his respirator. Instead of offering him a hand, Zenyatta sits next to him.

“Perhaps it is time for talk in lieu of motion.”

“It is frustrating.”

Zenyatta nods, waiting patiently where once he would be met with silence or the need to lead Genji with more questions.

“I have been here for over a year, and still the anger of what I have lost burns in my chest. Sometimes I think it will swallow me.” His hands squeeze into fists against the cobblestone. “If I focus too deeply upon it, the rage feels renewed. But I know the feeling will pass.”

They watch the other students train around them, far enough away that their conversation is little more than murmurs.

“A year ago, you did not know your anger would fade. It is like an ember, burned low and blackened, but still hot, able to stoke new flames.” Genji digests each word, lost in Zenyatta’s pronunciation and the hum of his machinery singing in the quiet lull between syllables. “But embers grow cold, no matter how powerfully they once blazed.” Zenyatta turns to him. “You have grown so much, Genji. I wish I could say I have aided more in this process, but it is the same fire that nearly consumed you that now leads you towards self acceptance.”

“Impossible. I…” Genji’s chest tightens. “I could have never done this without you, master. I was lost. I would have wandered and become a demon—”

Zenyatta raises his hand.

“I have guided you, but that is only the first step.” Zenyatta’s orbs expand their range to circle them both, glinting in the sun. A comforting, familiar weight settles low on Genji’s thigh, and somehow, beneath the light of late afternoon sun and surrounded by the ambience of sparring, his eyes burn with sudden, powerful emotion.

“It is my wish that one day you will be able to see yourself as I see you. To realize how brightly you shine would bring me great happiness.”

Genji covers Zenyatta’s hand with his own, squeezing harder than he means to stop the trembling from overtaking his fingers. Zenyatta must know what hold he has over him, how much he cares for the one who dragged him screaming from the brink.

He slides his hand beneath Zenyatta’s, cupping their palms together, and presses Zenyatta’s knuckles to his respirator. He powers his visor off, just feeling the gentle heat and hum of Zenyatta’s circuitry.

“Genji.” Zenyatta sounds impossibly breathless, the last syllable of his name softening to a whisper.

A young Genji would tease. An older Genji would scoff and turn away. Now, Genji shakes with his master’s awe as the first tears slip down his cheeks, shoulders shaking, voice hiccuping through his respirator.

Zenyatta surges; where once he would touch with great care he flattens against Genji’s body, burying Genji’s head into the cables at his neck with a gentle hand upon his ribbon, the other clutching his back like a lifeline.

Zenyatta is so warm, lighter than he thought he would be. How could an omnic who sends him to the ground and holds his heart in his hands be so fragile?

He squeezes Zenyatta and just holds on, the tears falling so easily now, a torrent he did not know he held within him.

Genji hopes with everything he has left that he will not open his eyes to ancient shala.


End file.
